> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://dronelist.io/docs/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Pricing > Your price list and what your business costs to run — so every quote carries its margin # Pricing **Pricing** is one page holding two things: what your business costs to run, and what you sell. Keeping them together is the point — each service sits next to what it actually earns you per hour. The page has a **cost-basis band** across the top, then a split below it: your service list on the left, the editor for whichever service you picked on the right. There are no packages and no Good/Better/Best tiers. A service is one offering. If you want a variation, make it a second service. This is deliberate — a client choosing between three versions of the same job is a decision you should be making for them. *** ## The pricing wizard If you do not know what to charge, start with the wizard. It walks five short steps and writes your services and your rates in one go. | Step | What it asks | | ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Your setup** | Where you operate, how experienced you are, what you fly, how you are insured, who you sell to | | **Your hour** | What your business costs to run, and what you want an hour to earn | | **What you sell** | Pick from a catalog of common drone services | | **Set the price** | A slider over a band, with your break-even and target marked on it | | **Your price book** | Review, then write it all at once | The band on the price step draws up to four layers, and each one only when it is real: * **Your break-even and your target**, always — they come from your own cost basis. * **An anonymised peer band**, only once at least five other operators have comparable data. * **A modelled rate** from the same eight-factor model behind the public [drone pricing calculator](https://dronelist.io/tools/drone-pricing-calculator). * **A published US range**, plotted only for a workspace billing in USD. A layer that is missing is genuinely missing. The wizard will not draw a guess. *** ## Services Each service is one offering. The fields: | Field | Description | | -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Name** | What the client sees on a proposal | | **Description** | What the work includes | | **Category** | Which kind of drone work this is — it sets the default effort hours | | **Price** | One rate | | **Currency** | Your billing currency | | **Unit** | What the rate is charged on | | **Typical quantity** | How many units a normal job of this service comes to | ### Units `Per hour` · `Per day` · `Per flight` · `Per mile` · `Per area` · `Per project` · `Per sq ft` · `Per acre` · `Per sq m` ### Why typical quantity matters It is what makes a non-flat unit mean anything. A per-acre service at €12 with a typical quantity of 40 is a €480 job. Without it, the page can only work out what a flat-priced service earns. Leave it at 1 for per-project, per-flight, and per-day services. ### Effort hours Every service carries the hours a typical job takes, split four ways: | Category | What it covers | | ----------- | --------------------------------------------- | | **Flight** | On site, in the air | | **Editing** | Processing, editing, building the deliverable | | **Report** | Writing it up | | **Admin** | Scheduling, client email, paperwork | You do not have to fill these in. Each one **inherits** the default for the service's category until you override it, and you can override just one — setting your own editing time keeps flight, report, and admin inherited. Clearing a field puts it back to inherited, which is not the same as setting it to zero. These hours are the one number the app cannot work out for itself, and they are what turns a price into an hourly rate. *** ## Your cost basis The band across the top of the page is your business, as one live equation. Four numbers drive everything else: | Setting | What it is | | --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | | **Target hourly profit** | What you want an hour of your time to earn | | **Overhead** | The share of revenue that goes on running the business | | **Equipment cost per hour** | Wear and depreciation, per flight hour | | **Mileage rate** | Cost per mile of driving to site | | **Typical travel** | Round-trip distance for an average job | Change any of them and every service's earnings-per-hour updates as you type. ### Where these numbers come from Rather than guessing at an overhead percentage, list what your business actually costs. Open **Where these numbers come from** in the cost-basis band and add your real costs: | Field | What to enter | | --------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What is it** | A short name — "Liability insurance" | | **Amount** | What it costs | | **How often** | Every month, every year, or a one-off purchase | | **Spread over** | One-off purchases only — the years to spread it across | | **Counts as** | **Gear** is charged per flight hour; everything else is overhead | dronelist works out what your equipment and overhead rates really are, from a rolling twelve months of accepted work. Your own entered rates sit beside the derived ones, and **Use these numbers** copies the derived values across. **Nothing is written until you press it.** A number you set on purpose is never overwritten. Rates are only derived once you have **three accepted jobs**. Below that the costs and their yearly total still show, but no rate does — a rate from one job is an anecdote, not a trend. This is not an expense log. There are no dates on spend, no receipts, and no per-job costs — just the handful of fixed costs behind your rates, entered once and revisited yearly. *** ## What each service earns With a price, a typical quantity, and effort hours, the page can show what one job of each service actually returns per hour, against your target. | Reading | What it means | | ----------------- | ----------------------------------------- | | Above your target | The price is doing its job | | Near your target | Worth a look before you quote it again | | Below your target | This service is quietly costing you money | On Pro, once a service has enough finished jobs behind it, the figure switches from your estimate to what those jobs really paid — and the page tells you what price would fix a service that is losing money. See [Plans & billing](/docs/features/billing). *** ## Where this shows up * **[Proposals](/docs/features/proposals)** pull their line items from your services, and the publish check shows the margin on the quote before you send it. * **[Home](/docs/features/home)** and the [monthly money review](/docs/features/automations) use the same arithmetic, so a month's total can never disagree with the jobs inside it. * **The [public API](/docs/api-reference/overview)** exposes name, description, price, currency, and unit. Your effort hours and typical quantity are internal cost data and are never exposed. *** ## Tips The wizard gets you a whole price book in a few minutes. Adjusting one number afterwards is much easier than starting from an empty page. The default overhead and equipment rates are placeholders. Ten minutes listing what you actually pay for is what makes every margin in the app mean something. Leave the rest inherited. The hours only need to be right where the money is. That is roughly when the derived rates stop being a guess and start being your business.